Are you living your life in halves? Better add another third!

A subject very near and dear to me is covered in a great way @ Truthinaging; but I’ve asked a great metaphysical blogger to weigh in on the subject as well – and of course, YOU, dear reader!

What I’m into is ageing…or not.  Like a blog entry I read at truthinaging about why this is NOT the second half of my life.  So….when you’ve spent a summer modeling in New York, another summer on a fishing boat in Kodiak Alaska….lived in Puerta Vallarta, speak Spanish….and now you’re over 50 – what’s next?  What’s the next adventure?  How do you psych yourself up to always believe the best is just before you and NOT to live in your glory days?   I think the answer to this will be a universal need for everyone as the see saw tips to the over 50′s and it’s life changing, radicalizing and motivating to know you’ve got another 30 years to live another life.  But how to get the message out?

The blog contest for ideas for writing is at Skywriter….and if you are as interested as I am in the answers to this question, I want your help on this treasure hunt of epic proportions as we battle the myth that age is anything more….than just a number!

Summer skies,

Jacqueline

Gone fishing….

or maybe just dreaming…..thanks to everyone who has checked in in the last year – it’s been fun.

Heading out this morning into the sun….won’t be back for awhile….my theme song and my thank you…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQDJ45qJHBQ

Do You Idolize Coupledom?

I am on a Finding Your Soulmate site, and some people were posting how when life situations happen, such as their car breaking down – it would be so much easier and better to have a significant other.  Both to follow you to the mechanic’s shop and to comfort you.  In my experience, having a significant other doesn’t really change the fact that you have to deal with endless “maintenance” in life.  For example,  my new glasses prescription is radically different and now I can’t see with new lenses – so a second trip to the eye doctors will be in order.  No one can do this for me, and someone else feeling sorry for me isn’t going to help much either.

What do you think?  Is life easier in tandem?  Or do we just idealize and idolize coupledom and romance?! 

I have a boyfriend and am often still just as overwhelmed as when it was just me and the house.  We planted maybe 16 trees to make up for those the hurricane took away and it’s Texas’s worst drought ever on record for this month, and having a partner doesn’t change the overwhelm of trying to keep all those trees watered and healthy.  Of course he cares, but he has his own worries for tomorrow – firing a helper, keeping track of the stuff his boss is letting slip through the cracks. Is it fair to expect him to consider my priorities his?  I don’t think so.  I think it’s fair to ask for help and talk about what’s bothering me or overwhelming me, but I don’t think he can stop his life’s maintenace to do mine for me.

I’ve just decided that life itself is a lot of work and it’s the same with one or two people – and we tend to romanticize how it’s going to be easier from now on if there’s someone else involved.  But – especially if we chose poorly, no – it’s going to be a LOT harder.  A failed realtionship is much harder than simply not entering into one.

I Know A Secret

About men, that endlessly fascinating topic!  My friends and I are in a never ending debate on sleeping with a man – when to do it, does it matter?  And for me, I’ve had multiple long-term (5 years +) relationships begin with the one night stand.  Then I found out a secret.  Well, Athol Kay touched on it, and Scot McKay explained it.

Now – this may be incomprehensible for those of us who most identified with Samantha on SITC - the fact is, men don’t want a Samantha.  Not long-term, not most men.  And it’s not because she sleeps around.  It’s because she exhibits “impulsive” behavior.  And that is so not what a man looks for in a women.

Except for the ones I had one night stands with  that  turned into 10 year relationships with marriage proposals.  I always thought that if I liked you enough to want to date you, I’d definitely like you enough to want to sleep with you as well – and so I did.  I’d say I pick men who in turn would value that trait, and have a high level of security in their masculinity; my BFF  says I just have really good odds.  And being “not the marrying kind,” is kind of irresistible to those guys.

But in general – men qualify and quantify and judge how women are.  And they quickly decide if they want you or they don’t.  And I haven’t spoken to any yet who would want a committed relationship with Samantha.  Impulsive behavior leads to issues of trust and questions of reliability and all those things people claim they want to base their very real happily ever after relationship on.

However, I am impulsive!  So – for me – that fact influenced not only who I picked but who picked me.  And I’ve never regretted a single one of those one night stand guys – they were the great loves of my life.

Still, if you’re a woman who’s looking to date and wondering about the three date rule and the “poofers” in your life you encounter…it’s good to know why men don’t want a Samantha, and that it’s NOT because of her moral values.

I wonder if some men don’t actually fear women like Samantha and I?  And I’m glad I’ll never know those guys as they will self direct themselves – right out of my life.

Fabulously Fearlessly Fun,

Jlina

At ch you??

I’m just randomly stealing someone’s facebook comment – but I was invited to “keep this sneeze going,” and after the phone conversation I had with a family member – it seemed apropos!

ATCHOO!!!!!………if you’re allergic to bullshit,drama queens,head games,liars and 2-faced people, keep this sneeze going…..

And, here’s the deal – if you’re someone with an agenda – that’s head games.  If you’re someone who wants to convince me that Obama really reeeeeaaaaaalllly doesn’t have a real birth certificate - that’s bullshit.  If you’re someone who can’t just go look out the window and see the sunlight dappling on and through the trees and feel the air on your skin and feel a sense of peace - you’re a drama queen.  If you’re someone who says they’re my friend and yet invites other people to express their negative opinions of me – you’re a liar.  And if you’re two-faced, well which face do you SEE when you look in the mirror?  The one you show me, or the one you go to bed with at night?

None of these things are dependent upon me, none of them reflect on me and none of them….can not be changed.  Be real, be really real – be AUTHENTIC!  And live out loud.  Show the same face, the same worldview, the same opinions all of the time, and you’ll know who your true friends are because they will not leave.  And you won’t have them trying to change you, convince you or control you.

When you’re really lucky you get a best friend as good as mine, who once said to me, “I would not have wanted to be alive on this planet without you.”  No conditions, no qualifiers…that’s love, folks.   And I AM a lucky lucky woman to have such love surrounding me!  It would be my wish for us all, as well.

Frazzled angel looking at you quizzically….

Jlina

Interactive Internet

Is the interactive Internet a good thing?  I fell down a rabbit hole of blogging and found myself defending my worldview for hours every day! 

That can’t be a good thing.  Blogs as self expression may be – I’m not sure yet.  I appreciate the chance to find my voice, to express myself, to know there are people who agree with me or ‘hear’ me.

But in general, after a few days sabbatical, I’m finding I feel so much more happy to just be, in my backyard, at the Walmart, at the ocean at the end of my street.  I really have created my dream life and I so wanted to pull everyone into it; not anymore because I’m being pulled out of it!

I’m vowing to myself I won’t get so wrapped up in a discussion or defense of my beliefs ever again.  My beliefs haven’t changed, and I’ve lost hours of my life.  I’ll also allow myself to make a quick and graceful exit if I find myself in a (chat)room of people who are intent on making me fit the program!

Not that I blame anyone, maybe this is something one has to find out on one’s own?  I don’t want to be anyone’s Guru, anyone’s Coach or anyone with an answer.

I want to live my life as an open question, that allows for all sorts of  answers! I may have an idea, or give advice, but it’ll be advice that fits ME – and so the best question for one to ask would be does this advice fit me?  It’s an imperative question for an authentic life!

And, if you’re checking in here on liveyourdreamblog - I want that for you too.  The unexpected, the unusual, the controversial, the passionate, the out of the BOX answer – that’s the one I’d go for!  Does this advice move me, propel my out of a funk, deliver me from a bunch of negative beliefs – work for me in improved relationships with other people? Because if it doesn’t, well what are we doing listening to it?

I want to find that, be that and participate in that which gives me a higher quality of life  and a greater passion for it!

Feeling cartwheel turning head over heels green grass kite flying blue skies jumping passion, that’s my goal today!

Brenda’s Story, and the Signs We Find on the Road to Self Love

I asked a friend of mine to help me inspire another friend who is living in a state of suffering. And, even though she herself is going through her own hard times she  generously did so.

My friend Brenda wrote a beautiful moving allegory in the truest sense of the word. An allegory is  a form of extended metaphor, in which objects, persons, and
actions in a narrative, are equated with the meanings that lie outside the narrative.  So the story on the surface is about a deer, but the story in Brenda’s heart is about herself.  And the meaning of the deer to her in her life.

It’s a beautiful story of a heroic action that means as much to us, as it did to her.

Here, then, with my admiration and thanks –  is Brenda’s story.

A few days ago, I told a little bit about a deer I tried to rescue off the highway. I poured out my love on that broken little deer, and then it hit me a couple days later, that deer was me.

K, I so relate to you, because I have not felt a will to live in recent weeks, in my process of walking away from R. It’s not so much that I’ve been suicidal…I just haven’t felt a desire to live. I had chosen the quit option. I was spending much of my days laying in bed, curled up cuddling with my dogs.

I seek comfort, warmth, love, tenderness, caring, and understanding.

One place I seek it is in food: it touches me; it’s soft, warm; feels good; fills me. I have realized I have had a love affair with food, because I didn’t have the love of a man. But it’s self-defeating, self-sabotaging. My body doesn’t need more nutrition – my heart does.

I heard the story of a Navy Seal on Sunday, who wrote a book, “Sole Survivor”. He survived an ambush by 150 Afghan soldiers while he was with a group of 20 Navy Seals. He talked mostly about their training, which led up to the incident.